We are delighted to introduce this year’s selected artists for the LABA Program 2026✨
Under this year’s theme “NAME”, we are bringing together a group of inspiring, diverse, and forward-thinking creatives whose work we look forward to sharing with you.
The response to our open call was overwhelming — we received so many incredible applications and felt truly grateful for each and every one. While we couldn’t select everyone, this is by no means the end of the road. Keep creating, keep applying, and stay in touch — we see you.
Our first session kicks off on April 15, and we couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead 🚀
“Entropy in itself has no moral valence: it points only towards the future.”
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the opening of this year’s Mar’a’yeh exhibition. It was truly magical. ✨
Deep gratitude to our incredible fellows, who have spent months creating works that explore chaos, memory, and connection transforming entropy into beauty. And many thanks to our brilliant curator duo, @denalisa.shijaku & @olafkuhnemann.studio whose vision brought this show to life.
Every year we grow — in knowledge, in courage, and in strength.
The challenges are many, but the result speaks for itself.
Thank you for being part of this journey 💜
The show runs until December 14
@kuenstlerhaus.bethanien
Fellows: @meyrapaints@ruthsergel@guli__dh@zoeparan@nimrodastarhan@ioanna_lng@mudeebakery@nazanin_bahraamii@_____.nic@corytamler@farahbouamar
Photo Credit: @franztaff
Meet our @lababerlin Team ✨
Dekel Peretz - Program Director
Dënalisa Shijaku - Creative Director & Co-Curator
Olaf Kühnemann - Creative Director & Curator
Betül Ulusoy - Educational Programs & Faciliation Lead
Siena Powers - Curatorial Writer & Program Coordinator
#lababerlin #muslimjewishexchange #künstlerhausbethanien
MEET OUR FELLOW: Olivia Kassaei ✨
Olivia Kassaei is an Austrian-Iranian writer and artist based in Berlin. Her background in art criticism and cinema studies informs both her artistic research and material explorations.
She wanders through the world like a detective, turning to the subtle, the quiet, and sometimes the blinding. More recently this has meant exploring fragments from (family) archives, working through video and sculpture.
Her work lingers on the forgotten, on ruins, and on processes of erasure in relation to personal and cultural narratives. Playing with different forms in the studio is her way of searching for the universe her work might inhabit while grappling with larger questions about art, meaning, and practice.
She holds an interdisciplinary BA in Thinking as a Creative Act from New York University and is currently applying for Master’s degrees in Berlin.
In our first Beit Madrasa session, centered on close textual study, we read the story of Moses and the Burning Bush (Exodus 3-4) alongside the first revelation to Mohammed (Surah Al-’Alaq 96:1–5, 19)
In the story of Moses, God names Themself as ’I Am who I Am” — pure being, self-existent and absolute. In the first revelation to Muhammad in the cave of Hira, the divine name is invoked as the source in whose name we read, learn, and pray. Where one reveals God as Being, the other calls us to draw near to that Being which sees all, through knowledge, humility, and prayer. Between them lies a shared movement: from human uncertainty, doubt, or fear toward a deeper presence with what is.
Thank you to our director, Dr. Dekel Peretz, and Dr. Mohammad Gharaibeh @bit_humboldt.uni (Institute for Islamic Studies, Humboldt University), for their guidance and insight. As well as to our fellows for their thoughtful engagement, questioning, and discernment in our conversation.
MEET OUR FELLOW: (A)Viv Maoz Haggiag ✨
(A)Viv Maoz Haggiag was born in Libya and fled with her family to Rome, Italy, as a refugee at the age of three. At eighteen, (A) Viv migrated to Israel. In 2013, (A)Viv moved to Berlin, where she lives and works today.
Working across photography, sculpture, and installation, (A)Viv integrates digital media and video to create hybrid visual environments. Shaped by early cross-cultural experiences, (A)Viv’s practice explores themes of borders, migration, origin, time, and refuge — both as personal narratives and broader cultural conditions.
The work seeks to evoke emotional and psychological states, inviting viewers into spaces of tension, transformation, and uncertainty. (A)Viv’s creative process is intuitive and exploratory, allowing ideas to emerge organically through visual experimentation.
(A)Viv holds a Fine Arts Diploma from Minshar School of Art in Tel Aviv and a Diploma in Curatorial and Museology Studies from the Israeli Art Institute.
(A)Viv continues to work as both an artist and curator in Berlin and Israel.
MEET OUR FELLOW: Özlem Yilmaz ✨
Özlem Yılmaz is a Berlin-based musician, nay player and instructor and researcher of Islamic studies whose work unfolds at the intersection of sound, spirituality, and intercultural dialogue. She combines academic research on Islamic philosophy and Sufi traditions with an active musical practice rooted in the maqam systems of the Middle East, focusing especially on Istanbul soundscape.
A ney player since her early years, Özlem has studied extensively within Ottoman, Persian, and contemporary modal music traditions, working with distinguished teachers. Her musical language draws from Sufi music, Mevlevi ritual repertoire, and diverse maqam traditions, while remaining open to experimentation and cross-cultural exchange. Central to her artistic practice is the exploration of music as a space for interreligious encounter. She has contributed to numerous projects and performances in collaboration with institutions such as the Catholic Academy Berlin, Protestant church communities, and the German Islamic Academy. Through concerts, workshops, and interdisciplinary formats, she creates platforms where Islamic musical traditions engage in dialogue with other religious and cultural expressions .
Özlem is also active as an organizer and educator, leading workshops on maqam music and ney, directing Sufi choir initiatives, and developing participatory formats that bring together diverse communities. Alongside her artistic work, she publishes on music in Islam and contributes to academic projects on Sufism and Islamic intellectual history. In her practice, scholarship and performance are deeply intertwined: both are guided by a search for meaning, resonance, and connection across traditions.
Still thinking about the Open Studios at Künstlerhaus Bethanien ✨
Even more special knowing that our program had only started on April 15, and by May 2, eight of our fellows were already sharing some of their works as part of the Open Studios.
The Open Studios at Bethanien always feel unique — a place where artists, creatives, curators, and visitors come together to exchange ideas, connect, and spend time with art and one another.
As LABA Berlin, we were very happy to introduce Mar’a’yeh during the day through a small presentation featuring flyers from past programs and a timeline tracing the journey of LABA over the years.
Thanks to everyone who came by, spent time with us, and shared conversations throughout the day. It was wonderful to see so many familiar and new faces together.
Until the next Open Studio 💫
📸
@galyafeierman
MEET OUR FELLOW: Yoav Hainebach ✨
Yoav Hainebach is a visual artist based in Berlin since 2020, a return enabled by historical justice and family origin. Hainebach was born in Tel Aviv, and has lived, studied, and worked in Beijing, New York and Boston. Hainebach works on, with, and in paper, using painting, printmaking, drawing, embossing, water-marking and paper-making to play with the space between reference and its visual abstraction. Hainebach’s work is often self-reflective of the material itself and poses questions of time-linearity, of erasure as creation, and of chance.
MEET OUR FELLOW: Farokh Falsafi ✨
Farokh Falsafi is an interdisciplinary, research-based artist and architect based in Berlin. With background in architecture, his work is grounded in a sustained inquiry into space as both a material and political condition. Through his practice, he investigates how power is produced, embedded, and negotiated through spatial configurations in contemporary society. His work moves across language, constructed environments, and mechanisms of social control, developing a critical vocabulary that examines how space is shaped, governed, and experienced. Engaging with questions of land governance, technology, and ecology, Falsafi’s work reflects on the entanglement of spatial practices with broader social and environmental systems. His artistic practice serves as a catalyst for critical reflection on the ecological, social, and political implications of contemporary spatial practices.
As part of our ongoing sessions, this week we spent time with the fellows’ practices.
Through images, objects, and conversations, each person opened a window into their work and way of thinking. The session created space for exchange, curiosity, and careful listening.
Thank you for the openness, the questions, and the different perspectives brought into the room.
It is in these shared moments that the value of being in dialogue becomes tangible. ✨
MEET OUR FELLOW: Melisa Yağmur Saydi ✨
Melisa Yağmur Saydı works primarily with video, with a practice spanning audiovisual performance, installation, printmaking, and writing.
Her work explores how current events and dominant political narratives echo through social and individual psychology. She brings different layers into contact to examine movement between the personal and the collective, the physical and the digital, the real and the dream. In her work, documentary elements merge with surreal, animated worlds.
Across digital media, she creates a tactile and vulnerable visual language that reflects the flawed humanity behind technological facades. She often uses satire to address propaganda, urban alienation, and authoritarian power structures.
Born and raised in Istanbul, she holds a double bachelor’s in Cinema and Anthropology from Lumière University and an MFA from Beaux-Arts de Marseille. Her work has been screened, exhibited, and published internationally.
Melisa has also been long-time involved in LGBTI+ activism across France and Turkey.
#lababerlin #deutscheislamakademie #künstlerhausbethanien #jewishmuslimexchange
